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RDD / Every kind of member drive / SAS and SATA SSD members

HPE MO1600JVYPR · Dell LT0800MO · Samsung PM893 · Micron 5300 · Intel D3-S4510

SAS and SATA SSD members. Fast until the controller stops answering, and then all of them at once.

A solid-state member drive fails differently from a spinning one. There are no heads to click and no platters to scratch; there is a controller, a firmware image and a bank of NAND, and when the controller or the firmware stops, the drive goes from working to absent in a second. Sometimes it goes on a schedule. HPE's SAS SSDs on firmware before HPD8 failed at exactly 32,768 power-on hours, and a second line before HPD7 at 40,000; Dell's SanDisk-built LT-series did the same at 40,000 and then reported 0 GB. Drives fitted in the same afternoon reach the same hour in the same afternoon, which is why a RAID 5 of six SSDs can lose four members before lunch. Some of those failures leave nothing readable and some leave everything, and the first look tells you which. One SSD member imaged is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–4 days at the bench.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
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Power down. Label every slot before a drive comes out. Do not rebuild while a second drive is flagged. Do not clear or import a foreign configuration. Do not initialise, reformat or PSID-revert anything. A rebuild reads every sector of every surviving member, and on a set whose drives were bought together it is where the second failure is found. Nothing on the drives gets worse while the server is off.

SSD member symptoms, and what each means.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Several members failed within minutesA power-on-hour limit in the firmware. Stop; do not update the failed ones.Do not delay
Drive shows 0 GBThe failed state of Dell's LT-series at 40,000 hours, and of other controller faults.Do not delay
Failed after a power eventController or its firmware. Imaged at controller level where the model allows.Everyday job
Predictive failure with wear at 100 per centWrite endurance spent. Image it now; it reads until it does not.Do not delay
Consumer SSD dropped out of a set870 EVO and its relatives bring consumer faults to server jobs.Everyday job
SAS SSD locked after a controller swapA SED. Find the key.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: power the server or shelf down, write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier, and keep it in the carrier. Send every member from the set where the set is the job, or the one failed member where the set is healthy and you want it imaged for the rebuild. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller only if we ask for it. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth rather than the price of the drives, and use a tracked service. The posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

Where it lives, and what fails.

The 32,768-hour and 40,000-hour clocksHPE bulletin a00092491 (November 2019) named SAS SSDs that fail at 32,768 hours on firmware before HPD8; a00097382 (March 2020) named another line failing at 40,000 hours before HPD7. Dell's KB 000177640 covers its LT-series at 40,000 hours before D417. HPE's own words: neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered, and drives put into service together will fail nearly simultaneously.
What the bench can and cannot doSome controller failures answer to work at chip level, where our tools support the model; some firmware failures leave a controller that will never address its NAND again. The free look is honest about which, before any charge.
Wear-outA write-intensive set spends its endurance together. When the first SSD reports its wear at 100 per cent, the others are a few weeks behind; image the flagged one and plan for the rest.
Consumer SSDs in server setsSamsung 870 EVO drives from early 2021 batches developed uncorrectable errors and turn up in RAID sets built to a price. They bring consumer faults and consumer recovery odds.

Model strings, and what they tell us.

Describe yours to us →
Model string What it is What it means on the bench
MO1600JVYPRHPE 1.6TB mixed-use SAS SSD, 40,000-hour lineFixed in HPD7; failed drives are assessed, not promised
VO0480JFDGTHPE 480GB read-intensive SAS SSD, 32,768-hour lineFixed in HPD8
LT0800MODell 800GB mixed-use SAS SSD, SanDisk-built40,000 hours before D417; reports 0 GB after
PM893 / MZ7L3…Samsung 960GB–7.68TB SATA data-centre SSDController-level work where supported
MTFDDAK…TDSMicron 5300 SATACommon in vSAN nodes

From the parcel arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. An engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins: the interface, the sector format, the firmware, the security state, and what the controller was saying when it stopped. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no imports, no resets
02

The drive on its own bench

An SSD member is read on its own interface first; if the controller answers, it is imaged at once, because a controller that answers today may not tomorrow. If it does not, the drive is examined for the fault it has: a firmware failure that may be addressable, a controller that may be worked at chip level, or a failure that leaves nothing to read, and the free look says which.

Read at its native interfaceFailing heads to the clean bench
03

Imaged once, at its native sector size

Where the controller answers, the drive is imaged in one pass with its weak blocks last. Where it does not, the recovery is at controller or chip level, model permitting, and the result is an image or an honest no.

Head by head, weak areas lastNative sector size preserved
04

The image, and the set

Where the set is healthy and one member was the job, the image goes back to you on a fresh drive, sector-identical, ready to rebuild from. Where the set is the job, every member is imaged and the array reassembled in software from the images: order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point read from the drives' own metadata, the file system repaired on the virtual volume, never on the originals. The array work is covered in full on our RAID array site, and it happens on the same bench.

One member: a sector-identical image on fresh mediaA set: reassembled in software from the images
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–4 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • Do not update the firmware on the failed drives. The fix prevents the failure; it does not undo it, and the update writes.
  • Several at once means the clock. Check the power-on hours on the survivors immediately; drives fitted together are minutes apart.
  • An SSD that reads should be imaged now, not after the meeting. Controllers fail without warning and without a second chance.
  • The first look says what is possible, and on some firmware failures the honest answer is nothing. It costs nothing to hear it.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RDD-2026-0558JOB LOGGED ✓

Six MO1600JVYPR SSDs in a DL380 Gen9 RAID 5, four failed within an hour at 40,000 power-on hours, the other two updated by an engineer the same afternoon

The free look found two of the four failed drives answering at controller level and two not. Two members of six was not enough to rebuild a RAID 5, and the two survivors had been updated and re-added, which had already rewritten what a rebuild could use. We said so, sent everything back, and did not charge.

0% recovered, and no bill3 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Stop, and check the power-on hours on every survivor
  • Label the slots and send the failed drives
  • Send the survivors too if the set has failed
  • Tell us the firmware revision and what has been updated

What sets us back

  • Updating the firmware on failed drives
  • Re-adding a failed drive to see
  • Rebuilding onto the survivors after a batch failure
  • Assuming an SSD that reads today will read tomorrow

Questions answered before you commit.

Four of my SSDs failed in an hour. Can the data be recovered?

Sometimes. If the controllers still answer, they are imaged and the set rebuilt from the images. If the firmware failure has left them unable to address their NAND, the honest answer is no, and the free look says which before any charge.

Is HPE right that the data cannot be recovered after the 32,768-hour failure?

Often. Some drives answer at controller level and some do not. It costs nothing to find out which yours are.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one member after the free look; two to four from £500 + VAT; larger sets from £1,250 + VAT. On most jobs no data means no bill.

How long does it take?

3–4 days at the bench for one drive; 5–10 days at the bench for a set.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

SSDs failed at 32,768 or 40,000 hours →Several drives failed at once →Enterprise SSD members →HPE-branded drives →Dell-branded drives →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the server off and the drives in their slots.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting